Short Stories by Chekhov
neck; her eyes glowed defiantly, her movements were passionate, while he
became more and more indifferent, and held out his hands to her as
graciously as a king.
"Bravo, bravo!" said people watching them.
But little by little the huge officer, too, broke out; he grew lively,
excited, and, overcome by her fascination, was carried away and danced
lightly, youthfully, while she merely moved her shoulders and looked
slyly at him as though she were now the queen and he were her slave; and
at that moment it seemed to her that the whole room was looking at them,
and that everybody was thrilled and envied them. The huge officer had
hardly had time to thank her for the dance, when the crowd suddenly
parted and the men drew themselves up in a strange way, with their hands
at their sides.
His Excellency, with two stars on his dress-coat, was walking up to her.
Yes, His Excellency was walking straight towards her, for he was staring
directly at her with a sugary smile, while he licked his lips as he
always did when he saw a pretty woman.
"Delighted, delighted . . ." he began. "I shall order your husband to be
clapped in a lock-up for keeping such a treasure hidden from us till
now. I've come to you with a message from my wife," he went on, offering
her his arm. "You must help us. . . . M-m-yes. . . . We ought to give
you the prize for beauty as they do in America . . . . M-m-yes. . . .
The Americans. . . . My wife is expecting you impatiently."
He led her to a stall and presented her to a middle-aged lady, the lower
part of whose face was disproportionately large, so that she looked as
though she were holding a big stone in her mouth.
"You must help us," she said through her nose in a sing-song voice. "All
the pretty women are working for our charity bazaar, and you are the
only one enjoying yourself. Why won't you help us?"
She went away, and Anna took her place by the cups and the silver
samovar. She was soon doing a lively trade. Anna asked no less than a
rouble for a cup of tea, and made the huge officer drink three cups.
Artynov, the rich man with prominent eyes, who suffered from asthma,
came up, too; he was not dressed in the strange costume in which Anna
had seen him in the summer at the station, but wore a dress-coat like
every one else. Keeping his eyes fixed on Anna, he drank a glass of
champagne and paid a hundred roubles for it, then drank some tea and
gave another hundred--all this without saying a word, as he was short of
breath through asthma. . . . Anna invited purchasers and got money out
of them, firmly convinced by now that her smiles and glances could not
fail to afford these people great pleasure. She realized now that she
was created exclusively for this noisy, brilliant, laughing life, with
its music, its dancers, its adorers, and her old terror of a force that
was sweeping down upon her and menacing to crush her seemed to her
ridiculous: she was afraid of no one now, and only regretted that her
mother could not be there to rejoice at her success.
Pyotr Leontyitch, pale by now but still steady on his legs, came up to
the stall and asked for a glass of brandy. Anna turned crimson,
expecting him to say something inappropriate (she was already ashamed of
having such a poor and ordinary father); but he emptied his glass, took
ten roubles out of his roll of notes, flung it down, and walked away
with dignity without uttering a word. A little later she saw him dancing
in the grand chain, and by now he was staggering and kept shouting
something, to the great confusion of his partner; and Anna remembered
how at the ball three years before he had staggered and shouted in the
same way, and it had ended in the police-sergeant's taking him home to
bed, and next day the director had threatened to dismiss him from his
post. How inappropriate that memory was!
When the samovars were put out in the stalls and the exhausted ladies
handed over their takings to the middle-aged lady with the stone in her
mouth, Artynov took Anna on his arm to the hall where supper was served
to all who had assisted at the bazaar. There were some twenty people at
supper, not more, but it was very noisy. His Excellency proposed a
toast:
"In this magnificent dining-room it will be appropriate to drink to the
success of the cheap dining-rooms, which are the object of today's
bazaar."
The brigadier-general proposed the toast: "To the power by which even
the artillery is vanquished," and all the company clinked glasses with
the ladies. It was very, very gay.
When Anna was escorted home it was daylight and the cooks were going to
market. Joyful, intoxicated, full of new sensations, exhausted, she
undressed, dropped into bed, and at once fell asleep. . . .
It was past one in the afternoon when the servant waked her and
announced that M. Artynov had called. She dressed quickly and went down
into the drawing-room. Soon after Artynov, His Excellency called to
thank her for her assistance in the bazaar. With a sugary smile, chewing
his lips, he kissed her hand, and asking her permission to come again,
took his leave, while she remained standing in the middle of the
drawing-room, amazed, enchanted, unable to believe that this change in
her life, this marvellous change, had taken place so quickly; and at
that moment Modest Alexeitch walked in . . . and he, too, stood before
her now with the same ingratiating, sugary, cringingly respectful
expression which she was accustomed to see on his face in the presence
of the great and powerful; and with rapture, with indignation, with
contempt, convinced that no harm would come to her from it, she said,
articulating distinctly each word:
"Be off, you blockhead!"
From this time forward Anna never had one day free, as she was always
taking part in picnics, expeditions, performances. She returned home
every day after midnight, and went to bed on the floor in the drawing-
room, and afterwards used to tell every one, touchingly, how she slept
under flowers. She needed a very great deal of money, but she was no
longer afraid of Modest Alexeitch, and spent his money as though it were
her own; and she did not ask, did not demand it, simply sent him in the
bills. "Give bearer two hundred roubles," or "Pay one hundred roubles at
once."
At Easter Modest Alexeitch received the Anna of the second grade. When
he went to offer his thanks, His Excellency put aside the paper he was
reading and settled himself more comfortably in his chair.
"So now you have three Annas," he said, scrutinizing his white hands and
pink nails--"one on your buttonhole and two on your neck."
Modest Alexeitch put two fingers to his lips as a precaution against
laughing too loud and said:
"Now I have only to look forward to the arrival of a little Vladimir. I
make bold to beg your Excellency to stand godfather."
He was alluding to Vladimir of the fourth grade, and was already
imagining how he would tell everywhere the story of this pun, so happy
in its readiness and audacity, and he wanted to say something equally
happy, but His Excellency was buried again in his newspaper, and merely
gave him a nod.
And Anna went on driving about with three horses, going out hunting with
Artynov, playing in one-act dramas, going out to supper, and was more
and more rarely with her own family; they dined now alone. Pyotr
Leontyitch was drinking more heavily than ever; there was no money, and
the harmonium had been sold long ago for debt. The boys did not let him
go out alone in the street now, but looked after him for fear he might
fall down; and whenever they met Anna driving in Staro-Kievsky Street
with a pair of horses and Artynov on the box instead of a coachman,
Pyotr Leontyitch took off his top-hat, and was about to shout to her,
but Petya and Andrusha took him by the arm, and said imploringly:
"You mustn't, father. Hush, father!"
THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE I
THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought
out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white, Giant;
then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive horses. Old
Shelestov saddled Giant and said, addressing his daughter Masha:
"Well, Marie Godefroi, come, get on! Hopla!"
Masha Shelestov was the youngest of the family; she was eighteen, but
her family could not get used to thinking that she was not a little
girl, and so they still called her Manya and Manyusa; and after there
had been a circus in the town which she had eagerly visited, every one
began to call her Marie Godefroi.
"Hop-la!" she cried, mounting Giant. Her sister Varya got on Maika,
Nikitin on Count Nulin, the officers on their horses, and the long
picturesque cavalcade, with the officers in white tunics and the ladies
in their riding habits, moved at a walking pace out of the yard.
Nikitin noticed that when they were mounting the horses and afterwards
riding out into the street, Masha for some reason paid attention to no
one but himself. She looked anxiously at him and at Count Nulin and
said:
"You must hold him all the time on the curb, Sergey Vassilitch. Don't
let him shy. He's pretending."
And either because her Giant was very friendly with Count Nulin, or
perhaps by chance, she rode all the time beside Nikitin, as she had done
the day before, and the day before that. And he looked at her graceful
little figure sitting on the proud white beast, at her delicate profile,
at the chimney-pot hat, which did not suit her at all and made her look
older than her age--looked at her with joy, with tenderness, with
rapture; listened to her, taking in little of what she said, and
thought:
"I promise on my honour, I swear to God, I won't be afraid and I'll
speak to her today."
It was seven o'clock in the evening--the time when the scent of white
acacia and lilac is so strong that the air and the very trees seem heavy
with the fragrance. The band was already playing in the town gardens.
The horses made a resounding thud on the pavement, on all sides there
were sounds of laughter, talk, and the banging of gates. The soldiers
they met saluted the officers, the schoolboys bowed to Nikitin, and all
the people who were hurrying to the gardens to hear the band were
pleased at the sight of the party. And how warm it was! How soft-looking
were the clouds scattered carelessly about the sky, how kindly and
comforting the shadows of the poplars and the acacias, which stretched
across the street and reached as far as the balconies and second stories
of the houses on the other side.
They rode on out of the town and set off at a trot along the highroad.
Here there was no scent of lilac and acacia, no music of the band, but
there was the fragrance of the fields, there was the green of young rye
and wheat, the marmots were squeaking, the rooks were cawing. Wherever
one looked it was green, with only here and there black patches of bare
ground, and far away to the left in the cemetery a white streak of
apple-blossom.
They passed the slaughter-houses, then the brewery, and overtook a
military band hastening to the suburban gardens.
"Polyansky has a very fine horse, I don't deny that," Masha said to
Nikitin, with a glance towards the officer who was riding beside Varya.
"But it has blemishes. That white patch on its left leg ought not to be
there, and, look, it tosses its head. You can't train it not to now; it
will toss its head till the end of its days."
Masha was as passionate a lover of horses as her father. She felt a pang
when she saw other people with fine horses, and was pleased when she saw
defects in them. Nikitin knew nothing about horses; it made absolutely
no difference to him whether he held his horse on the bridle or on the
curb, whether he trotted or galloped; he only felt that his position was